Dynamic Psychology in Modernist British Fiction

Book excerpt: Dynamic Psychology in Modernist British Fiction argues that literary critics have tended to distort the impact of pre-Freudian psychological discourses, including psychical research, on Modern British Fiction. Psychoanalysis has received undue attention over a more typical British eclecticism, embraced by now-forgotten figures including Frederic Myers and William McDougall. This project focuses on the Edwardian novelists most fully engaged by dynamic psychology, May Sinclair, and J.D. Beresford, but also reconsiders Arnold Bennett and D.H. Lawrence. The book concludes by demonstrating Woolf's subtle assimilation of pre-Freudian discourse.